


Wracked and Ruined

by going_going_gone



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Becky is biracial, Canon Disabled Character, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Mental Health Issues, Mistress of Fear, Nolanverse, Non-Consensual Touching, Stalking, that matters to me so i wanna point that out
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 07:10:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13852662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/going_going_gone/pseuds/going_going_gone
Summary: Rebecca Albright just wants to get through school and take her father out of Gotham. She wants a better life, she wants to help people, and she wants to avoid the dangers that come along with a bunch of criminals in themed outfits. But when Jonathan Crane, better known as the Scarecrow, targets her street during an "experiment", her dreams come crashing down, and all she wants is revenge. Meanwhile, he becomes obsessed with the foolish young woman willing to testify against him. Gotham's changing, and it's changing fast, and Becky finds out too late she might not be as prepared for the consequences of her actions as she thought she was





	1. Wracked

Becky glared at the clock on her dashboard. The shining green numbers seemed to mock her. _6:00 pm_. Good lord. She wasn’t going to hear the end of this one. She could hear her father’s grumbling now, muttering about how dangerous Gotham was, about how irresponsible she was.

            Class had run a little late—about half an hour late—as they discussed the unique challenge of criminal law in a city like Gotham. After the attacks of the terrorist Joker only two years earlier, the costumed “hijinks”, as he’d explained them during his trial, Gotham _should_ have been changed drastically. Security at Arkham Asylum should have been heightened, law enforcement should have been purged of corruption, and the sudden appearance of a bevy of oddly costumed should have been stopped. Not so.

            Instead, the zany nature of Gotham’s criminal underground had only intensified. An ecoterrorist calling herself Poison Ivy had held a bunch of big-oil magnates hostage and, a man calling himself the Riddler had begun an almost impressive hacking spree, relieving the online systems of at least three different banks of more than a million dollars, and she’d even heard a rumour that there was a guy going around dressed like the Mad Hatter kidnapping pretty young blonde girls and making them dress up like Alice Liddell.

            There were also the already existent threats. Scarecrow, previously the psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Crane, had been in an out of Arkham at least five times. It should have led to an outcry from the public about increasing the security methods for the resident nuthouse, but a civil rights organization was fighting that out in the courts, making sure Arkham’s methods didn’t become cruel and unusual. Becky Albright had always had a fervent respect for the law, but even she recognized the irony of protecting the new, cruel and unusual class of criminal from _cruel and unusual_ punishment.

            And now the Joker was out. It was…well everyone was _terrified_ , waiting with baited breath to find out just how the clown would punish them for daring to lock him away. Apparently he’d taken his therapist hostage. Becky had felt a moment of sympathy for the doctor, who was no doubt dead at this point.

            All of this had been discussed in class, the future lawyers of Gotham debating fiercely what could be done for the city. Becky was of the opinion that they needed to stop shoving any criminal with a weird gimmick into Arkham. She wasn’t a psychologist, but she knew the law. Criminal insanity wasn’t the same as mental illness. Maybe the Joker, Poison Ivy, the Riddler, Scarecrow, maybe all of them _were_ mentally ill, but they weren’t insane. They knew what they were doing, and they belonged in Blackgate, where the staff knew how to handle escape attempts. But a startling amount of her classmates took two separate but equally horrifying stances. Some thought that a messy, public execution of the Joker was the best course of action—fuck due process apparently—and an even greater number seemed either cowardly or apathetic. She didn’t know what was worse. Most of them explained why they’d never risk prosecuting the gimmicky criminals.

            It was all too much to deal with, too much to stew over while she should be preparing herself mentally for the inevitable run in she was about to have with her father. She wondered what she’d find when she opened the front door. Drunken apathy stung, but it was preferable to explosive anger.

            Richard Albright was the epitome of bitter old man. Though, he was 54, and most people that age weren't exactly considered elderly, her father simply hadn’t aged well. Mourning from dawn till dusk while drinking and smoking heavily could do that to a person.

            When Becky was 17 her mother Catherine and her brother Tommy had both been lost in an accident with a drunk driver. She’d been in the car, had suffered severe damage to her left leg, and her father had never recovered. He’d never gotten over the fact that the drunk driver had walked out of the chaos without a scratch while he family had been torn apart.

            Becky cleared her throat and shook herself out of the depressing reverie she’d slipped into. Pressing down on the gas pedal, she started the tricky trip through tight busy Gotham streets out of the city towards the run down suburb she called home.

            If the world was anything other than cruel, she’d be able to put all of this in the past in just a few months, completing her final year of law school and passing the bar without a hitch. Then she could take her father out of the city he despised and get him the help he needed. Her Aunt Joy lived in Metropolis, and she called to ask about her younger brother every Sunday. If Becky could just let her aunt take care of him, maybe he’d improve.

            The ride home took half an hour on a good night, which this was not, so Becky found herself pulling onto her own familiar street at 7:15. Their house was by far the leas cared for on the street, bad even by Gotham’s standards, but then, she wasn’t exactly able to perform intensive yardwork, and her father couldn’t be bothered either. Their neighbors had always look down on them—they were the only interracial family in a predominately white, and apparently predominately _racist_ area of Gotham—but the condition of the Albright residence didn’t help.

            As she pulled into the weedy drive way, Becky cut the engine. She cast her mind towards dinner, glad she’d gone shopping last night instead of tonight. Dinner was already going to be thirty minutes late, she shuddered to think of the complaints he’d sling at her if it was hours late.

            She swung her stiff left leg out of the car before her, followed by her right one, turning back to snag her cane from the passenger’s seat. With a sigh, Becky dragged herself from the car, keeping her weight off of her left side, leaning heavily on the door frame of her shitty little Toyota sedan. Her leg always hurt more in the cold, even more after a long day hurrying between classes.

            Becky made the slow steady journey to the front door, avoiding the thicker patches of grass. The porch light switched on about halfway along, banishing the familiar fear she felt in the dark—a completely logical fear, in Gotham.

            On the other side of the door, she was met with more darkness. She sighed. Drunken apathy tonight. Her father had taken to turning all the lights off and watching GCN while he drank himself into a stupor. Flicking on the lights, Becky called out to him.

“Dad, I’m home.”

            As if on cue, the grumbling began. She ignored it, limping into the kitchen and turning on _that_ light too. She hurried through dinner, deciding he could survive on spaghetti for the second night in a row. She’d make something better tomorrow. Not for the first time, Becky felt a swell of resentment at the fact that their roles had been reversed. She was more of a parent to him than a child. She got him up in the morning, made him breakfast, bought him food, made sure he showered. It was exhausting. But she squelched that train of thought right away, feeling the corresponding guilt come on full force. He was sick, and he needed her help. How could she complain about that, even if it was just in her head?

She heard his unsteady footsteps as she poured the noodles into a colander waiting in the sink. It was probably one of the first times he’d gotten out of his chair today, other than to go to the bathroom. He stunk of booze, she could smell it before he’d even come through the archway leading from the open air living room and dining room into the kitchen. She put her back to him and turned off the stove, stirring the marinara sauce lightly before dumping the noodles directly into the pot.

“Want me to make you a plate?” she asked. He grunted out a yes in reply, so she pulled two plates from the cupboard, glad she didn’t need to fight him about it tonight.

“Pasta?” he grumbled, but when she held the plates out towards him he still took them. They made their way back into the dining room, sitting caddy-corner from each other at the end furthest away from the living room.

“How was your day?” she asked. He shrugged, hunkering down in his seat and beginning the process of shoving his face with food as fast as possible so he could go sit in front of the television again. He looked pale, gaunt, and completely wasted. He’d become a shadow of a man. Her eyes stung with unshed tears.

“Sorry I was late. Class went a little long.” He shrugged again.

She rolled her eyes when she knew he couldn’t see and started picking at her own food. She’d had a late lunch, and wasn’t really that hungry. Plus, she wasn’t really feeling well.

The blaring tone of a GCN breaking news alert caused both father and daughter to swing their heads towards the television, where a pretty young newswoman stood in front of Arkham Asylum.

“Summer Gleeson reporting from Arkham Asylum, where hospital officials have _finally_ confirmed the reported escape of Jonathan Crane, otherwise known as The Scarecrow.  Commissioner Gordon released a statement only minutes ago explaining that the staff of Arkham Asylum had attempted to keep the escape hidden in order to avoid public notice. He also wished to remind Gotham citizens that Jonathan Crane is armed and dangerous, and should not be approached if spotted. If you do see this man, please call on of the following numbers…”

A picture of the ex-doctor had popped up on screen, along with a graphic displaying a tip number for the Gotham MCU, a tip number for GCN, and 911. Becky spared a glance at the photo of Jonathan Crane, still unnerved at the sight of him.

Becky had been required to take an undergrad psych in order to get her bachelor’s degree, and for some reason, for all that her fellow students had warned her away from Professor Crane, she’d decided she wanted the challenge. The first day, she’d been up for the challenge, ready to prove that she could pass his class with flying colors. By the end of the semester, she regretted her weird attempt at a power-play, barely managing to get the necessary B- in order to keep up her GPA. All told, he'd made at least five students drop the class, four transfer schools, three cry, and another two attempt suicide. He’d been cruel, unreasonable, and a pompous dick. He’d also been a genius, which was the only reason the University never took issue with his teaching methods. She shuddered at the memory, glad she’d escaped his notice. It had come out only after she’d made it through his class, after she’d moved on to law school that he had a habit of starting relationship with his students—relationships that usually ended with him experimenting on some poor twenty-year-old girl with his fear gas.

“This fucking city is a joke,” her father raged, breaking Becky out of her memories.

“Dad,” she sighed, not ready for one of his rants about the rottenness of Gotham.

“These fucking reporters, acting like anyone’s got the balls to go after that crazy asshole. No one but that goddamned Batman, who’s just as bad as the rest of ‘em, acting like he’s above the shittin’ law.”

When he was angry, his Gotham accent laid on thick, and he became much more animated. He was flinging his arms at the television while he talked. Becky had to lean back in her chair in order to remain out of harm’s way.

“I’m tired of scum like them, scum like the rat-bastard Crane running all over decent folks, getting shoved in that damn nuthouse and escaping in days. Bullshit. And nothing gets done. The city needs to be fucking cleaned up.”

            Becky sighed, deciding there was nothing to do but finish her dinner and leave him to his frustration. She wanted to take a shower, do some homework, and then sleep. Mostly, she just wanted to sleep.

“If that Batman wants to actually help he should just finish the job!”

Becky shut her eyes for a moment, begging for it to just stop.

“It’s this city, that’s why half my fuckin’ family’s gone. Nothing gets fixed. Year after year.”

Becky got up from the table without a word, leaving her plate for tomorrow morning, leaving her father for tomorrow morning, making a swift exit, limping down the hall towards the bathroom as fast as her stiff limb would allow her. She ignored the disgruntled noise her father made, ignored the way his voiced picked back up as her continued to rant at the television once she’d slammed the bathroom door behind her.

 ```

She was working through a dense stack of case studies when she started hearing the screams. They tore through the silence on the relatively peaceful street outside of Gotham, catching her off guard. In a rush, Becky tried to scurry of her bed, forgetting about her cane, and she crashed to the ground in a painful heap. Her left leg was twisted under her, straining at torn, weak muscles, and she let out her own cry of pain.

She laid on the ground, stunned for a moment, unable to process both the pain and the noises drifting towards her. She heard a sharp crash and then the shattering of glass, and tried to twist herself away from the suddenly open window above her head. Glass shattered down around her, and she winced at the shards that nicked at the exposed skin on her arms and legs.  A thud, followed by a quiet hissing sound alerted her to something being tossed through her window. With a grunt, Becky slid onto her stomach, trying her best to crawl towards whatever the object was without slicing her skin open on the glass on the ground. When she finally reached it, she discovered with a sharp pinch of panic that it was a small metal canister, leaking a heavy white mist. She caught it full in the face before she could move away, and felt the way it seemed to slither down her throat and into her lungs.  

Her muscles seized in terror, her body fighting its fight or flight reflex in favor of freezing in place. She inhaled more and more of the gas, sinking into a primal state of terror. Images of maggots crawling over rotting flesh, torn metal sinking deep into fragile skin, blood leaping out of her body, all flashing through her mind in an instant. Visceral, bone-chilling sights. She screamed, shrieked, finally able to scramble away from the thing as it morphed, changing from a small black canister into the eviscerated corpse of a huge rat. Her breathing came fast, as her mind succumbed to the utter terror.

Her vision filled with the faces of her mother and brother, rotting away, turning putrid before her eyes. And then it was her classmates, pulling at her frizzy brown hair, pointing at her gap teeth, her freckles. Petty fears, but still terrifying. She saw them mocking her limp, laughing at the “ugly little cripple” who thought she was good enough to make it as a lawyer, the poor little freak with a dead mother, an alcoholic father. The stupid little mixed breed, shunned by her father’s family, tainted with the impure blood of her mother.

She sobbed, covering her head, trying to keep the stark white fingers of everyone she knew as they poked and prodded at her, trying to dissect just what made her _so fucking worthless_.

It wasn’t clear how long she stayed like that, curled up, bleeding and bruised, on the hard floor of her bedroom, stuck in a realm of pure terror. It could have been hours before she slipped unconscious, but even sleep couldn’t protect her, filled with nightmares as it was. Her lungs felt dirty, all of her felt dirty, and worthless, and disgusting. Maggots, rats, bats, clowns, all paraded through her horrified brain, before finally, blissfully, she was unaware of anything.


	2. Voiced

Becky woke up to cold air blowing through her room. She was curled on the floor, shivering and aching from the position. When she attempted to move, pain shot through her, from the horrible headache pounding behind her eyes, to the excruciating, throbbing ache in her left leg. She peered down at the blood trying along the cuts that were scattered across her extremities, wincing as she tried once more to unwind her stiff limbs. After several minutes of small, careful movements, Becky managed to reach her cane, which had fallen to the ground, sliding beneath her bed. With that, and some help from her nightstand, she eventually stood, but her left leg was basically dead weight beneath her. She’d never really considered just how high of the ground her bed frame was, but the fall, which she could now remember _almost_ clearly, had proven it was _too_ high.

As she moved towards her bedroom door, Becky scrambled to put together the pieces of what had happened last night. She remembered with crystal clarity her fall, remembered her window shattering, but after that it was… She mentally flinched away from what came after. It was obvious what had transpired. Becky had watched to many GCN reports to assume it was anything other than an attack by Jonathan Crane, but still. She’d understood only in the barest terms, just what his fear toxin did. Last night had—once again, her mind flinched back from the memories.

Huffing, Becky shoved her door open, limping rather slowly out into the hall. If the screams were any indication, she wasn’t the only one who’d taken a bad trip last night. She was still shivering, her nerves still strung tight, her heart skipping erratically as she was faced with the short, dark hallway leading out into the living room. Becky almost stopped right there, faced with the unforgiving darkness, she almost turned right back around to curl up under her comforter and wait for emergency services to be called by literally _anyone_ else, but she knew she had to check on her father.

Shoring up all the courage she possessed, Becky began walking down the hall, cursing whoever had decided it was a good idea to put the light switch all the way at the other end of the hall. She passed the closed doors, pausing at the bathroom to peek her head inside, just in case her father had—she wasn’t sure, but she hoped beyond hope he hadn’t been caught unawares by the fear toxin while he was taking a shower. Luckily, he wasn’t in there, and she knew for a fact he wouldn’t have stepped foot into either the master bedroom he’d shared with mom or Tommy’s old bedroom. He hadn’t been inside either room for almost ten years.

She hurried, as much as she could, down the rest of the hallway, towards the literal light at the end of the tunnel, where she could see some early morning light beginning to lighten up both the living room and the dining room. Once she reached the end, her nerves calmed, just a little, and she continued with a little more comfort into the living room.

“Dad?” she asked. She didn’t see him, and suddenly she was seized with the worry that he might have left the house in a panic last night. He could be anywhere, he could be dead in a ditch somewhere, he could have been hit by a-

The thoughts caused her brain to ache even more. Her breath came in short little gasps, and her heart raced at a mile a minute. Her hands shook, and she had to fight to keep hold of her cane, less she lose her balance completely.

Becky worked to shut down the residual panic threatening to overtake her, focusing on calming her breathing. She couldn’t freak out right now. It took her a moment to ease the fear, but once she had, she felt steadier, as if the outburst had been the last little bit of the fear toxin leaving her system. Pushing everything except for the task at hand out of her head, Becky resumed the search, stepping further into the main room of the house. Her father’s chair was turned away from her towards the television. She wondered if he’d simply passed out there. She limped towards the chair, turning it slightly towards her. The swiveling bottom creaked ominously, weighed down by her father.

He was pale, sprawled out against the dark brown pleather upholstery. He’d always been pale, but this- Becky stared in dismay at his face, frozen in the expression he’d had just before he’d died. His mouth was open wide in a silent scream, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets. She stared at his slightly yellowed teeth, at the way his eyes were glazed white. She reached out to touch the skin of his face and felt the numbing coldness there.

Backing up without a sound, Becky scrambled to find the house phone find against the wall directly beside her father’s easy chair. Her hands resumed their violent shaking, making retrieving the corded phone extremely difficult, but she couldn’t turn her back on him. She kept him in sight the hole time as her fingers groped at the wall. Finally, she snagged her index finger in the curled up wire, sending the phone crashing off the hook and glancing off of her shoulder before it hit the ground. She pulled the cord towards her, yanking the phone from the ground.

She used muscle memory to dial 911, eyes still locked on her father. When the operator picked up, she gave their address, said that the whole street was in trouble, and explained that her father was-

Becky was calm, collected, and concise, right up until the woman on the other end thanked her and assured her that emergency vehicles were already on the way. She hung up, and collapsed. It was a more calculated collapse than the night before. Making sure that her cane was within arm’s reach, Becky slid down the wall, embracing the sharp pain she felt with the light switch got in the way, leaving a line of tenderness down the right side of her back. She felt the tears fall in huge, ugly drops, let her nose fill up with snot, let her body quake as she stared and stared and stared at her father. He hadn’t moved, even though she half expected him to get up from his seat and grab another beer from the fridge.

She sat like that for twenty minutes, noting the appalling response time of Gotham emergency services almost off-handedly. It wasn’t like there was anyone to save here. When the police cars and ambulances finally did make their appearance, Becky had to tuck her head between her shoulders to block out the ear-splitting sirens. The paramedics were first, pounding on her door. She couldn’t move herself to get up, still to raw, do when they opened the door, she reacted with relief.

“I’m here!” she called out, wincing at the way her voice resounded in her head. The pair of young men in the uniforms proclaiming themselves as first responders hurried towards her, noting both her position and the blood that seemed to have caked itself permanently to her skin. Then they saw her father. The one carting a gurney veered off to check his pulse, while the other crouched down to her with a expression she guessed was supposed to comfort her.

“Where are you hurt?” the man asked, eyes already scanning her for injuries.

“I- my leg. And the cuts. My head,” she managed, flinching away when he put his hand out to look over a particularly deep gash on her upper arm from the glass. It stung like crazy, and she noticed how much worse it felt to the others.

“Looks like there’s some glass stuck in this wound,” he explained. “We’ll have to get that out to prevent infection. Can you walk?”

She hesitated for a moment, wondering if, after sitting still once again for twenty minutes, her leg would cooperate with movement.

“I think so,” she answered eventually.

“Ulysses!” he shouted, and another pair of paramedics came trudging in, carting in another gurney. One of them, a large, strapping man with short dreadlocks and another bland, sympathetic look in his eyes came over.

“Let’s help her onto the gurney…” the rest of his sentence was a bunch of medical jargon she really didn’t want to listen to. She was busy watching the way the other pair of paramedics were extracting her father from his chair. Rigor mortis had set in, leaving him in a sprawling, defensive position. It made her sick to her stomach to them haul him onto the gurney and move him out the door. Her eyes followed the whole time, unable to part, up until they’d maneuvered him through the grass and onto the street, out of her field of vision.

“Alright, are you ready?” Ulysses and the other paramedic both stared at Becky, waiting for her to nod. She was still for a while, gauging just how painful a move this might be, but nodded eventually. They lifted her gently, laying her on the gurney as lightly as possible. She still had to brace against the ache that shot through her body, but once she was down, she felt a little better. No weight was being placed on her leg, and the worst of her cuts were unstrained. They strapped her in.

“My cane,” she reminded them, when they began to move her out of the house without it. Ulysses shot her a quick nod and reached down to grab it off the ground.

           

The hospital was chaotic. From what she could gather from her gurney as the paramedics wheeled her in, her street hadn’t been the only one to suffer the Scarecrows attentions. Apparently he’d hit several different suburbs, although, as one doctor had put it, any pattern the neighborhoods might have held was only discernible to “his own crazy-ass self”. There were GCPD officers swarming the emergency room, trying to talk to people half unconscious, heavily injured, or simply disinterested in risking their lives by giving a statement. Becky spotted a woman seemingly drenched in blood being rushed off through a set of double doors and winced. She’d been lucky, at least physically.

The paramedics handed her off to a set of grim, over-worked looking people the ugliest green scrubs she’d ever seen. One of the pair, a severe looking white woman whose name tag read Oliver, started inspecting her wounds with a calm detachment Becky appreciated. She rarely spoke, and when she did, it was in short clipped sentences.

“Need to get this glass out of her arm,” Oliver noted. “Other wounds are superficial. The paramedics have it down here that you…” she glanced down at a clipboard Becky hadn’t noticed for a moment before met her eye briefly “you complained about your leg?”

“I did,” Becky acknowledged, trying to keep her calm. “It’s a previous injury. My leg was, uh…” she trailed off for a moment, reminding herself mentally that his woman wasn’t asking out of curiosity, wasn’t gawking and staring. She was a fucking doctor, or maybe a nurse, or whatever, because Becky was too overwhelmed to deal with all the letter that were on the nametag after her actual name. “My leg was damaged in a car accident when I was a teenager. It was a really bad break, and it didn’t set right. There was muscle damage.”

“Chronic pain?” Oliver asked. She nodded. “Was it exacerbated by what happened?”

“I fell off the bed. Twisted it, and while I was…” she wasn’t even sure how to describe what she’d experienced while under the influence of the fear toxin. “While I was hallucinating I only made it worse. It’s like a 9 out of 10.”

She’d provided that last part without being asked, mostly because she’d dealt with the pain scale from doctors and nurses and specialists since her accident. Her leg was usually a 4 out of 10, simply because she’d gotten used to the constant ache, but even desensitized to the pain as she was, it hurt much worse right now.

After that admission, Oliver hurried Becky through the rest of the proceedings, which she appreciated, and after having the glass pulled from her arm and the wound stitched up, she got to sit through her the rest of her cuts being cleaned up, and met her actual doctor, a small woman with glossy red hair named Dr. Propst. She was overly effusive, and kept calling Becky a trooper. Dr. Propst explained that she’d have a CT scan in the morning to determine if her leg was further damaged by her fall and subsequent strain on the already weak muscles. She also hinted at a psychological eval, which Becky would rather didn’t happen, but she figured it wasn’t exactly her decision.

“And I’m sure the detectives will want to talk to you about what happened. It’s up to you if you’d like to talk to them tonight or tomorrow. Or not at all, of course. Just let your nurse know.”

With that Dr. Propst was gone, and after about half an hour, Becky’s nurse, an even peppier young blonde woman wearing green scrubs covered in little flitting fairies introduced herself.

“I’m Nurse Kelly, Rebecca. If there’s anything you need, just let me know. You can press this button and I’ll see it in the nurse’s station. Also, there’s a couple of police detectives who want to know if you’re ready to speak to them. I told them it’s a little soon for that, but if you want, I can send them in.”

Becky only shrugged. “You can send them in now. I don’t mind.”

Nurse Kelly looked a little irritated with that decision, but after a beat she nodded, pasting her sunny smile back on and peeking out into the hallway to let the detectives know Becky was open to talking.

She’d been surprised to hear that there were actual detectives waiting to speak with her, expecting beat cops more than anything, so when Commissioner Gordon walked into the room she was a little taken aback. The grim, mustachioed man Becky had seen on GCN countless times was accompanied by a young-ish woman with black hair slicked back from her face. Both looked like they’d been dealing with more shit than they’d been prepared for when they woke up that morning. Honestly they should have been used to it by now, considering they were police officers in Gotham.

“Miss Albright,” Gordon greeted her, offering her the bare bones of a smile.

“Uh, hello Commissioner,” Becky replied.

“Right, I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re getting such special attention,” he said with a dry chuckle. Becky didn’t smile. “So, in an effort to be transparent as possible, I’m here because you’re the last person in this hospital who’s conscious who hasn’t already refused to speak to the police about what happened last night.”

She wasn’t surprised. Even common criminals didn’t take kindly to being “ratted” on. She doubted anyone wanted to find out what one of the more eccentric ones would do to a snitch. But honestly, Becky was passed being intimidated. After what she’d seen last night, she couldn’t conceive of anything the Scarecrow could do to her to rival that. Even a second dosing of the fear toxin wasn’t enough. She’d been there already, to the dark pits of her mind. How much worse could it get.

She was sick of this, sick of these costumed weirdoes being able to traipse in and out of custody. Last night she’d suffered through her father’s own opinion on the matter, and now, he was dead, but right now, she agreed with him. The Scarecrow had just stolen the last member of her family left to her, and she was angry. In fact, suddenly, she was furious. The anger seized her out of seemingly nowhere. She’d been calm, numb even, but the knowledge that no one, not one person, had the courage, had the integrity to simply speak to the police was disgusting to her. Maybe some of them rationalized their actions by telling themselves that he’d be returned to Arkham for escaping anyway, but she wanted him to be held responsible for everything he’d done. He wanted him to be punished to the full extent of the law for what he’d done to _her_.

“Miss Albright?” Gordon said, voice snapping through her rage. She stared up at him.

“What do you want to know?” she wondered.

“Well, unless we can prove that Jonathan Crane was personally present for the crime, his defense might be able to argue that Crane freely distributes his chemical weaponry to anyone with enough money to buy it. Do you remember anything from that night that could place him there?”

Becky’s stomach churned. Because she _couldn’t_. She’d been tucked away in her bedroom when the canister had been chucked through her window. She hadn’t seen anyone, let alone the Scarecrow. The idea that anyone besides him would be attacking neighborhoods with _his_ fear toxin was both ridiculous and infuriating, simply because she understood logically why circumstantial evidence like that wouldn’t get Gordon a conviction. They needed something concrete. She didn’t have that.

So she had to lie. The idea was so obvious, so detestable, that it made her skin itch. She couldn’t let him get away with what he’d done, and she couldn’t lie and make a mockery of the law she wanted to uphold one day, but if she didn’t lie, he’d surely not be held responsible for this. She closed her eyes for a moment, hoping to block out the ambient noise of the hospital as she thought for a moment. She hoped that Gordon took her silence as hesitation rather than her scrambling for a feasible way in which she could have seen him. If she told him that she’d seen him on the way into her house, he would ask why she hadn’t called the police.

She opened her eyes when a thought struck her. “He tossed the canister into my bedroom.”

“You saw him do it?” the other officer exclaimed, her lips parting with a triumphant smile.

Becky nodded. “He wasn’t wearing the mask, just some weird thing on his mouth. I recognized him from the news, earlier. He- he was…” she stuttered to a halt, searching for other details that would add some credibility to her story. “He looked like he was having a blast. He was _smiling_.”

Gordon and the other detective shard a glance between each other, something heavy with an emotion she couldn’t detect from her position.

“Miss Albright, I hate to ask this of you, but since you’re the only witness willing to speak, would you be willing to testify in front of a jury about this?”

Becky replied without a moment of silence this time. “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK so I have no idea how hospitals or medical stuff works, so forgive the blundering I just did. Otherwise, please let me know how you like this. I know it's a niche pairing, but I'm really passionate about Becky.


End file.
